Alkira Resources / Wiki / Does SD-WAN Replace MPLS?
Does SD-WAN Replace MPLS?
In most cases, yes. SD-WAN is the next evolution in WAN technology. The WAN has been evolving for decades from T1, ATM, Frame Relay to MPLS and EPL/EVPL links. What has not changed is the in-ability to be agile with your WAN topology to meet the ever-growing needs of today’s businesses. Enterprises large and small now require the means for IT to move as fast as possible to meet the needs of businesses with requirements like turning new sites up, increasing uptime, moving traffic to cloud services and more. MPLS networks can be expensive and take a great deal of time to deploy. Additionally, MPLS networks don’t provide local redundancies. SD-WAN is a revolutionary WAN technology that can replace slower, costly MPLS networks with an agile cost saving and secure solution.
Network Costs and Agility
SD-WAN provides cost benefits such as the ability to run over any network topology such as high-speed broadband internet.
Because SD-WAN can run over lower cost WAN networks, many customers are replacing their costly MPLS links with two or more broadband internet links. This allows for the agility to turn new sites up in days instead of months with MPLS.
SD-WAN breaks down into underlays and overlays. Underlays are raw IPSec tunnels that can be built in varying topologies including mesh, hub-and-spoke, partial mesh, partial hub-and-spoke, as well as regional mesh and hub-and-spoke. Riding over the underlays are the overlay networks in which carry the traffic. Because everything in an SD-WAN network is IPSec based, SD-WAN can provide features such as instantaneous failover, parity packets, load balancing, QoS over broadband and more.
Visibility and Control
SD-WANs other major goal is for central network automation, visibility and control. This means that you maintain one place to deploy, monitor and maintain your entire WAN using templated designs.
SD-WAN adds the ability to steer network traffic based on applications. You can break certain applications out to a cloud provider locally, backhaul others to a hub, all with SLA based metrics.
It’s clear that SD-WAN is here to stay, providing a cost cutting, performance enhancing solution that can fit any network size.
